It was Cleek who recovered his wits first. He turned to the butler with a perfectly impassive face.
"We want to see Lady Margaret Cheyne at once," he rapped out sharply. "At once please!"
The butler moved a little aside, as if the visit were the most ordinary one in the world.
"Her ladyship has retired for the night, sir," was the surprising answer. "I will see if the mistress – Miss Cheyne – will see you."
"Miss Cheyne!" said Cleek, sharply.
"Heavens! man, but she is dead," shouted the outraged constable before Cleek could stop him. "This gentleman came to fetch me to view the body. In the name of the law, I am going to search the place."
Staggered by the announcement, with staring eyes and dough-white countenance the man fell back a pace, and seizing the opportunity thus offered, Cleek stepped into the hall, closely followed by Roberts.
"This is preposterous!" ejaculated the butler, at last, as if only just realizing the gravity of the situation; then, raising his voice, he echoed the last words, "Miss Cheyne dead!"
And then – a good many strange things had happened in the course of this night, but to Cleek it seemed as if the very earth had stopped in its course, the door of the room which he knew to be the dining room opened with a little angry jerk, and in the doorway stood a figure that caused Cleek's heart to leap in his mouth. It was no less than that of the woman who had lain dead at his feet but a short time ago. It was Miss Cheyne herself!
"Miss Cheyne dead! What does this impertinence mean?" she demanded in a hard, shrill voice at the sound of which the constable's ruddy face became purple with anger. He whipped off his helmet and he pulled savagely at his forelock.
"Beg yer pardon, Miss Cheyne, yer ladyship," he stuttered "for disturbing you – but this – this-individual – ," he almost choked over his words – "came and fetched me away from the nicest bit of supper I ever wants to see, to tell me you was a-lying murdered, begging yer pardon, and that Lady Margaret, whom he'd driven over in his car, was asleep alone in the empty house. More fool me to believe him, yer ladyship, but you'd 'ave done the same yourself in my place – "
"But I tell you – " began Cleek.
The Honourable Miss Cheyne wheeled round on him, her eyes sparkling with anger.
"So," she ejaculated, one hand pressed to her side, and Cleek found himself unconsciously recognizing the rings which had flashed in the lamplight on the fingers of the murdered woman. "So you are the impertinent stranger who inflicted himself on an ignorant, helpless girl, and caused me to miss my niece at the station. I drive back with the servants I had ordered from London to find my niece sleeping in a chair. I have packed her off to bed. And as for you, sir, you are an impostor and a thief for aught I know – "
This last assertion Cleek took no notice of, but advancing toward her he said firmly:
"I want to see Lady Margaret – "
"Indeed," was the sarcastic reply. "I am not aware that it is customary for strangers to intrude themselves upon people, even if they have been of some service. As far as you are concerned, sir, my niece's reputation has had every prospect of being blighted by your misconceived and misdirected attentions."
"I have no wish to intrude or to make much of the trifling aid I was able to give your niece, Madam," responded Cleek seriously. "My name is Deland, and you can make what enquiries you like from my friend Mr. Maverick Narkom, Superintendent of Scotland Yard as to – er – my general character if you are at all doubtful about it."
A still angrier gleam shone in Miss Cheyne's eyes, and even as the words left his mouth, Cleek, with that queer sixth sense of intuition, felt that he had said the wrong thing. If there were anything wrong, then the very name of the law would set them on their guard.
Miss Cheyne, however, seemed disposed to push her momentary advantage to its utmost.
"I don't care for fifty Superintendents," she declared, angrily, looking back into Cleek's face with flaming eyes. "You have no right to force your way into my house on any pretext whatsoever. Indeed, I am not sure that I can't have the law on you for breaking in my windows this evening. It will cost me a pretty penny. But I should like you to understand that I won't have my niece disturbed by anybody, so if you can't explain your visit to me, I'll say good-night and good riddance. As for you, Policeman, you ought to be ashamed of yourself to come here and rouse me on such a nonsensical errand."
She cut short Mr. Roberts's excuses and practically drove the two men back until they found themselves once more on the steps. Then the door slammed in their faces.
Constable Roberts turned swiftly upon his companion, and commenced a pent-up tirade against him for having fetched him out on this wild-goose chase.
Cleek stood still, pinching his chin with a thumb and forefinger, his eyes narrowed down to slits. Review the facts however calmly, he could still find no fitting solution. Sure he was that a dead woman had stared at him from the floor of that house, but he was also just as sure that the same woman had driven him out from it. And what of Lady Margaret herself? He had not a shadow of right to insist on seeing her. She was in the hands of her natural guardian, and yet, and yet – ! The shadow of doubt hung over him.
He stopped short suddenly and sniffed in the air, much to the open-mouthed astonishment of Constable Roberts, whose grumbling remonstrances died away.
"Good Lord man, sir, I mean," he exclaimed, agitatedly, "but what's in the wind now?"
"Scent and sense, my good fellow," said Cleek. "There is a distinct odour of jasmine in the air and an artificial scent, Huile de jasmin at that. It is a woman's scent, too, and some woman has been here to-night. She's been on these very stone steps."
"Well, what if she has? That don't excuse you a-saying that Miss Cheyne is dead, when she's no more dead than you or me – " retorted the constable, heatedly. "I shall be the laughing-stock of the country, fetched out like a fool – "
Hardly listening to the stream of grumbling expostulation issuing from the mouth of Constable Roberts, Cleek bent down and sniffed again vigorously. He tested each step till he reached the gravelled path. All at once he gave vent to a sharp cry of triumph for there, indented in the path before him and revealed by the light of his torch, was the mark of a slender shoe – a woman's shoe unmistakably.
In a second they had passed the lodge gates and were out in the narrow lane, which was black as a beggar's pocket, and as empty. A placid moon shone over silent fields, and only the soft whirr of the motor broke the silence as they sped along.
Nevertheless Cleek, as ever, was on the look-out. The sixth sense of impending danger which was in him strangely developed hung over him.
Suddenly, with a little cry of surprise and a grinding of brakes, he pulled the car up with such a jerk that Roberts, who had subsided into a somnolent silence, was nearly thrown off the seat at his side.
"A dollar for a ducat but I'm right!" he exclaimed sharply. "There's someone on that side of the hedge."
Without stopping a second he leaped down, cleared the low hedge as lightly as any schoolboy, and pounced on a crouching, running, panting figure.
"One minute, sir," he began. Then his fingers almost lost their hold, as the face of a man in deadly terror gazed up at him, and from him to the majesty of the law as embodied in the person of Constable Roberts. That worthy, having descended from the car, was now looking over the hedge.
"Lawks, sir, if it bain't Sir Edgar himself!" he ejaculated, and the sound of the evidently familiar voice seemed to pull the distraught young man together.
"Hello, Roberts," he said with a brave attempt at the debonair nonchalance which was his usual manner, an attempt that did